Dogpatch, which was created by Polaris Venture Partners, is a shared space designed to connect entrepreneurs and help founders conceive and launch startups. Aspiring entrepreneurs are offered desk space, bandwidth, coffee and even lunch. The locations (San Francisco, New York and Boston) are wide-open fun spaces that are typically shared with a more established local startup.

To quote Dogpatch:

But we are much more than a physical space — we are a community of like minded entrepreneurs who share a spirit of “open source entrepreneurship,” the idea that, particularly at the very earliest of stages, we all benefit by fostering connection points between and amongst entrepreneurs and startups. Whether it is sharing space, sharing ideas, sharing referrals, networking, or just hanging out, we all thrive on the flow of ideas, people and relationships. So, in addition to a workspace, we also use the lab frequently as a meeting place — for dinner events, brown bag lunch talks, workshops, conferences, symposia and good ole’ pizza and beer nights.

It's also a wonderfully subversive way for Polaris to meet and build relationships with great young entrepreneurs, often at the very earliest stages of their businesses.

Mark Ruddock

Personal blog of an international FinTech executive.

Hi, I'm Mark Ruddock, I'm a Canadian entrepreneur with two successful exits and over 20 years of experience at the helm of VC backed technology startups.

I'm currently Chairman of Finstar Labs. Our mission at Finstar Labs is to identify, invest in and help create the cutting edge user experiences, enabling technologies, and data science that will lay the foundation for the next generation of alternative financial services.

Prior to that I was Managing Director, International at Wonga, responsible for overseeing all businesses outside of the UK, including consumer lending businesses in Canada, Spain, Poland and South Africa and our eCommerce and product financing business BillPay in Germany.

Prior to that I was the CEO of Viigo, which became one of the most highly downloaded Blackberry apps of all time before being acquired by RIM (Blackberry) in 2010.

Before that I was the founder & CEO of INEA, an enterprise software company focused on the financial services industry, which was acquired by Cartesis in 2005, and is now part of SAP.